Digital three-dimensional manufacturing, also known as digital additive manufacturing, is a process of making a three-dimensional solid object of virtually any shape from a digital model. Three-dimensional printing is achieved using an additive process in which successive layers of material are formed on a substrate in different shapes. Three-dimensional printing is distinguishable from traditional object-forming techniques, which mostly rely on the removal of material from a work piece by a subtractive process, such as cutting or drilling.
Existing three-dimensional systems, however, use production techniques that are slow and generate significant waste. The state of the art systems use a flat staging area onto which a single, scanning printhead slowly deposits layers of material to form the object. The printhead is typically substantially smaller than the stage and must be scanned back and forth across the stage multiple times to form each layer of the object. The scanning motion is analogous to the manner in which a home inkjet printer operates and imposes severe constraints on the speed at which the three-dimensional printer can produce an object. Improvements to three-dimensional printers that eliminate the need to scan the printhead across the stage to form the object are desirable.